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5.07.2010

since jesse got to miss out on the fiasco of the first home showing, i was halfway hoping he would at some point get to experience the madness that went into it. well, i got my wish and it SUCKED.

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yesterday for the first time ever jesse left his phone at work. we rely almost exclusively on jesse for communication with the outside world since my phone will often lay untouched for days at a time. last night it sat in my purse in the kitchen and that's where it slept.

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the house is a wreck. i got so frustrated that the people who loved the house after the first showing always said they were coming back to see it again with their parents but never would. for about a week, we wouldn't leave the house unless it was pristine just in case that was the day they decided to come. then the home buyer credit deadline came and went so we figured it was all over. well, this week i got lena to call those people's realtor and pretend to be me and find out wtf was going on with them since i hate the phone and don't like talking to grownups. well before she ever called fake keight back, our own realtor told us she had heard that that couple was in fact still interested and wanted to come back "sometime." still not enough to get us to clean up. the downward spiral of cleanliness continued. then judah got sick 2 days ago and when there's a sick baby, the wheels really come off at our house. i will tell you that right now there is a rectal thermometer on the end table in the living room with the vaseline still on it (please don't faint mom or lori).

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so i am halfway to work this morning and i decide to look down at my phone to see if anyone called (highly unlikely). oh look, there's a text from our realtor. naturally i am not worried since she's probably just writing to tell us that the original couple is dead or somtehing plus, most showings are in the afternoon and we'd have time to go home and clean if it was someone new. oh wait, they want to come between 10-12 TODAY. as in, in 2 hours (why aren't these people at WORK!?!?). so i call jesse who is still at home to tell him that he will get to live my hell except instead of lena to help, he gets judah, and then i remember he has no phone. AHHHHHHHHHHHH.

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aside: the reason we didn't just say no to the showing today is because we are only leaving the house on the market until june so we want to give it every possible chance to sell by then. since it will take the builder 5 months max to build our new house and i am due to deliver on 11/13 (and judah was a week early) i refuse to be caught homeless when this baby hits. it is going to be hard enough living outside of our own place with just one toddler running around. living with people can be very challenging and while we appreciate beyond words the dukes' letting us live with them while the new house is being built, and i know we will all survive it admirably; if i had to do it with judah and a newborn and postpartum me, everyone would end up in mental hospital and jail.

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the first month or so of having a new baby mostly consists of me crying and running around the house with no bra on so that the boobs will be 100% accessible to the newborn. can you imagine me in this state at my in-laws' house, confined to just a room or two with my father in law on the premises as well? and that's not even mentioning the times when judah will be home with me too. oh my gosh i am sweating right now just thinking about that. but it won't happen because if it's not sold by june, we are taking our house off the market until after the baby is born and things settle down. our current house is by no means unlivable with two kids. also we very much want to preserve the dukes' mental image of me as "non-lunatic" and living with me postpartum would swiftly and violently disabuse them of this notion. no thanks.

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back to this morning after i get the text. i swing the car around (p.s. our whole town smells like honeysuckles right now, it's amazing) and head home. jesse says, "what did you forget?" and i say, "i forgot the worst and best news ever." so we decide i'll take judah to school in 30 minutes and jesse will clean the house and mow the lawn (NOT the newspapers). we fly into mary poppins mode.

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during our cleaning one of the cats comes in for the first time in about a week since we have exiled them outdoors until the house sells and promptly barfs all over the kitchen floor. thanks, buddy! i scream bloody murder for jesse who cleans it up while dry heaving to high heaven. i tackle the dishes in the sink and, oops, it looks like the pot that melted the bleu cheese and cream cheese for the buffalo dip last sunday hasn't been touched since then and has created stinky ass cheese fumes (total draw for home buyers right there). i start retching uncontrollably.

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by the time i got judah out the door for school the house was looking pretty good. no rotten cheese or cat vomit...hmmm, but hopefully jesse spotted the rectal therm. jesse just had to sweep and mop and vacuum and then mow the lawn. and he had over an hour to do this. so help me, if these people don't show up, i am taking the feline-vom and the cheese and the rectal particles in a ziploc bag over to their current living quarters and leaving them under their pillows.

We had a similar problem with selling our first house in Senoia. It seemed to be shown at least once a week. And every time it was shown, I managed to get there in time to make Haley's bed, pick up her toys, check the kitchen for dirty dishes, and vaccuum my way out the garage door so there were no foot prints left behind. That way we could see where the people had been walking around our house and looking. Well, one day I got the call that a couple was on their way. The only problem was my company vehicle was in the shop for maintenance. So I borrowed a co-worker's truck and rushed home just in time. Yeah, just in time to pull in the driveway and realize that my house keys were still attached to my car keys which were 30 minutes away. All I could do was run around the outside of the house hoping against all hope that one of the windows had been left unlocked. Nope, too bad, so sad. All I could do was peer sadly through the window at the messy house that was about to be shown in a matter of minutes. I was so mad I couldn't stand it. I felt helpless, unable to get into my own home. But as it turns out, that was the couple that ended up buying our house. And after doing some snooping a few years later, it was obvious they felt right at home in the clutter.

Keight, Blaine always knows when I am reading your blog because I start laughing in the middle of nothingness. What a stress relief for you to write and me to read. We've bought and sold 5 times so I feel your pain and angst.